Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy sat down with The Prog Report and discussed the upcoming album.
During the chat, the drummer updated the fans about the album and explained why it is taking so long to release now. He said:
“But Dream Theater is still old school where the band is in the studio the whole time. And it’s not like anybody’s doing anything at home separately. We do it all together, coming in one at a time to work and record. So, yeah, it’s a longer process than I’ve had in quite some time. But it’s great… It’s the old way. It’s the way I always made records with Dream Theater. I just hadn’t done it that way in so long, but it is good. And the process is really detailed this way.”
He then explained the steps of making a record and revealed it has been so long for him to make a record that way:
“All these other bands and projects, everyone kind of just does their own thing on their own time at their own place. But this really gives a real unified kind of band vibe. Even a couple of weeks ago, James [LaBrie, Dream Theater singer] flew back out, came down from Japan and we spent time collaborating on vocal melodies, so lyrics can be written to those melodies, which is kind of the way the process is in Dream Theater. So, yeah, it’s nice to just be a part of each one of these steps, like the old days. It’s been a while since I made a record this way.”
He did add that he won’t be giving away too many details about it. This new record will be their first since Mike rejoined the band last October.
What The Album Will Sound Like
There are not many details that the band publicly shared yet, but we now know that Dream Theater is trying to achieve the sound of their older albums. During another interview, John Petrucci explained why they would back up in their sound:
“I wanna nerd out for a second. So, in striving to get there, and with Mike Portnoy rejoining the band, we decided we’d kind of look back a little bit. So we contacted our longtime friend and engineer Doug Oberkircher, who recorded Dream Theater classic albums such as ‘Images And Words’, ‘Scenes From A Memory’, ‘Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence’, ‘Train Of Thought.’”
Petrucci added:
“And it turns out that Doug still had the original Neve preamps that he used to record the guitars on those records. And so we contacted Doug and we acquired the preamps, and, man, we got all the gank, all the aggression, but it still sounds really warm, smooth top end, expressive, layered. It’s like a T-Rex made out of chocolate cake lit on fire [Laughs]. Anyway, it came out great. So I can’t wait for all of you to hear that.”
You can see the interview below.